continuing with ideaspace metaphor: experience broadens your base, while intelligence helps you ascend (to meta)
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underappreciated fact: your ideaspace is bounded more by experience than by intelligence
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meta-knowledge is useful predictively but is also fallible. otoh nobody can tell you your experience was in-itself invalid, only the conclusions you draw.
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the more meta you go, the less emotional weight your knowledge carries. this has led to both miraculous success and extreme tragedy.
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because it lacks emotional weight, "going meta" can be a psychological defense mechanism. you can ignore a depressing experience by justifying it through a conceptual framework.
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thanks to mass media, we witness more suffering than ever. as a result, ideologies have become more abstract and more totalizing. they perform for us more emotional labor.https://mobile.twitter.com/simpolism/status/1024375297200795649 …
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although meta-knowledge dulls out emotional responses, no ideology can absorb them. our collective witness of suffering manifests as pervasive low-grade anxiety and depression.
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many have an expectation that a scapegoat will work, that we can absolve our emotions by hurting the target. but the scapegoat will not work unless blood is spilled. and online, suffering has no witness (except performatively, which doesn't count).
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it is commonly recognized that those who shout the loudest online are also the most unwell. why do they? because they have the strongest desire for absolution.
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Religious practice is informed by scapegoats. Their power lingers: fast on Yom Kippur, feel yourself become renewed. But real suffering (such as through collective fasting) must be experienced for these rituals to work. A call for suffering is not enough.
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The emotional tenor of websites is determined by their interfaces, e.g. Facebook limiting "react" emojis to limit expressive range.
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Most websites implicitly "ban" suffering. What would a website that allows it look like?
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Yes, like Discord. Suffering is something people will only express in the context of persistent relationships. This requires spaces that encourage persistence, which can also only be done by building walls. Discord gives you tools to build walls.https://twitter.com/lesbosskiy/status/1039678347817574400?s=19 …
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Certain "raids" conducted by 4chan and tumblr are remembered partly because they were effective. Raiders went into "othered" spaces with persistent membership and turned them into scapegoats.
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Funny idea: spaces where you can fuck up the participants to make yourself feel better, but they're all AI so nobody actually gets hurt. Oh wait, those are called "video games".
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Some interesting data on "producing hate material online". Note the inverse correlation with playing first-person shooters.
(methodology warning: study simply asked participants if they'd done hate speech, might mean underreporting for naive cases) https://doi.org/10.1089/vio.2017.0048 …pic.twitter.com/ydl269ylSn
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How might we combat online hate speech? Require pauses before replies in heated threads. Give people better emotional outlets and encourage their use (state sponsored gaming rigs when?). Let people build themselves better walls in social media spaces.https://mobile.twitter.com/simpolism/status/1039309075761311744 …
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Intelligent people: if you want to do good, expand your ideaspace (through experience!) and tend your walled garden by creating good truths.https://mobile.twitter.com/simpolism/status/1039313164662452224 …
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We are not post-truth. We've merely lost our institutions of truth, and must instead rely on our social spheres. To lead by honest truth-creation is an act of goodness.
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Great follow counts require great responsibility. You control what is true for your followers. Your philosophy becomes reality. Don't fuck it up.https://mobile.twitter.com/autotrnslucence/status/1039288121802641410 …
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End of conversation
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there’s a lot to be said about those whose ideaspace is mainstream/dominating vs those on the fringes - for example, you talk of mass media/collective anxiety rising without specifying WESTERN media (this assumption isn’t true elsewhere)
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those living in dominating ideaspaces have the handicap of not being forced to go beyond their own space, whereas the rest of us have always had to navigate 2 or more spaces with expanded ideaspaces, but our ideas aren’t so readily acknowledged
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this is true: people cannot understand ideas that rely on experiences they have not had. people disagree on what to do about this, though.
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actually - i’m saying those whose experiences are outside of the dominant narrative have the advantage of understanding ideas based on their own experiences + ideas belonging to those living the dominant narrative despite never having lived through those experiences
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i’m talking here about poc understanding their ideas based on their experience on top of having to understand white ppl’s ideas due to having had to imagine that experience to survive/communicate
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yes, I understood your point
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I was referring to the communication problem that occurs when you produce an idea based on X experience and attempt to share it with someone who hasn't had X experience. I believe Fricker calls this problem "hermeneutical injustice", and it's interesting to me.
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hermeneutical injustice goes one way (those whose worldview is sidelined), what’s the term to describe how the dominant (white, male, wealthy) are predisposed to thinking they’re capable of understanding the other - or even, that they already understand when they really haven’t
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